Packaging plants for sausages where the sausages, after having been treated in an oven, are placed into a basin with water are well known from practice. This water basin functions as buffer or intermediate reservoir from which the sausages are withdrawn and fed to a packaging machine in the further proceeding. Another well-known variant is a vibrating tub onto which the sausages coming from the oven are placed and transported to the zone from where they are withdrawn for further processing by means of a vibrating device. In this case, the sausages must be wetted directly when they come from the oven so that they can be transported on the vibrating tub by means of vibration. This moisture is basically undesirable for bacterial reasons, and sometimes an additional drying device for the sausages before packaging is required. These two variants of intermediate reservoirs require a lot of space, and a controlled transport and discharge of the sausages according to the first-in first-out principle is not ensured.